LE

Personally, I think they should put a nought on the end and make it Â£2.8m.

More important questions: "is it retrospective - and if so, how far back?"

If you read between the lines, this is the surest sign yet of a scaledown in operations. Politicians don't indulge in such 'largesse' unless they have a hidden motive.

Less people in theatre = less to pay out.

Political expediency and timing of elections are also factors. Watch them very closely. Also, I don't see any detail on the subject of 'the smaller increase for less seriously injured soldiers'. The goalposts could also be moved whereby definitions of 'seriously' and 'not seriously' are modified. Couple this with troop withdrawals over time and hey presto, the books could be balanced and Gordon Brown swept back into power on the crest of a wave of deluded and duped voters.

Old-Salt

Old-Salt

Sounds good but am I being a nasty suspicious person when I think that serving personnel should read the small print VERY VERY carefully to find the catch/multiple get-out clauses that the MoD has probably written into this "promise"?

LE

Personally, I think they should put a nought on the end and make it Â£2.8m.

More important questions: "is it retrospective - and if so, how far back?"

If you read between the lines, this is the surest sign yet of a scaledown in operations. Politicians don't indulge in such 'largesse' unless they have a hidden motive.

Less people in theatre = less to pay out.

Political expediency and timing of elections are also factors. Watch them very closely. Also, I don't see any detail on the subject of 'the smaller increase for less seriously injured soldiers'. The goalposts could also be moved whereby definitions of 'seriously' and 'not seriously' are modified. Couple this with troop withdrawals over time and hey presto, the books could be balanced and Gordon Brown swept back into power on the crest of a wave of deluded and duped voters.

We await the detail but the reported increases would be within the existing Armed Forces Compensation Scheme, which operates on a no-fault basis and should not normally involve any need for court action, although claimants may well be legally represented.

LE

Personally, I think they should put a nought on the end and make it Â£2.8m.

More important questions: "is it retrospective - and if so, how far back?"

If you read between the lines, this is the surest sign yet of a scaledown in operations. Politicians don't indulge in such 'largesse' unless they have a hidden motive.

Less people in theatre = less to pay out.

Political expediency and timing of elections are also factors. Watch them very closely. Also, I don't see any detail on the subject of 'the smaller increase for less seriously injured soldiers'. The goalposts could also be moved whereby definitions of 'seriously' and 'not seriously' are modified. Couple this with troop withdrawals over time and hey presto, the books could be balanced and Gordon Brown swept back into power on the crest of a wave of deluded and duped voters.

Fair enough. My mate is relatively new to this - and of course to some extent there has been a bit of special teaming to create the Command Paper. And what any half-sensible policy wonk always has to remember is: do not ever underestimate the ability of a large organisation such as the MOD or single Services to take something that was really, truly meant to have been a decent, sensible, fair policy and turn it into something worthy of Kafka. All it takes, sadly, is one idiot somewhere to send out an ill-considered or thoughtlessly worded letter, or another idiot to interprete "the rules" in a way that the man who wrote "the rules" did not actually intend, and a huge amount of needless pain and upset can be caused, and a well-meant policy discredited.

LE

Ahem, Out of what / whose budget is the compensation / funds coming from? in other words at who's or what expense or am I naive enough to believe that the MOD will be allocated funds above their existing budget. ( In other words, is Peter going to be robbed by Paul? )

War Hero

As I understand it, one of the important bits is that other Government Depts that pay benefits - DWP, HMRC I presume - will not be allowed to include the compensation packages when applying any means testing. So no "you can't get this benefit because the MOD have just given you a big wodge of money to say sorry for having your arm blown off."